Photos on Friendship

computer issues

our computer is having some trouble. it is getting help. so there will not be any photographs for a bit. xoooooxoooo

Over the past few days I have been thinking about friendship

I registered Tessa for school, she will begin in the fall and the application asked me, what I hoped for my child to get out of her school experience? I immediately answered that I wish for her to have fun in school, continue towards independence and lastly that she be connected to her innate joy for learning. Now, how is this related to my recent thoughts on friendship? Well, even after turning in the registration form, I am pondering what I want for her to get out of school. And I come back to friendship on a few different levels.

1. Friendship is a relationship of mutual respect, of support, esteem. I hope both my girls will find friendship of this definition in their education. A friendship with learning, an appreciation, a respect. (Is this too far out there?!!)

2. And more commonly friends. I want for them to have friends, to giggle with, to run with, to dance with, to learn with. I want them to feel safe and confident enough to share themselves with friends. For Tessa to share her humor and sensativity. For Teagan to share her kindness and unrelenting joy. For both to find themselves surrounded by friends, a few or many, who simply love them because. Just because they are who they are, however imperfect and at the same time however perfect.

Last week my friend, Maria visited for the week. We have know each other for 8 years. Our friendship blossomed in Boston as we both struggled to find meaning in our work as sales associates for a running store. Well, our job wasn't all too bad though at times we thought we might die selling running shoes but we didn't and instead we both walked away from quite full of appreceiation for one another. In those long, cold lonely winter months when few, if any runners needed new shoes, Maria and I shared the stories which make us who we are and along the way, I've come to love her just because.

Thanks Maria for your visit, for your willingness to seek out friendship and for sharing your self with first, me, then Brian, and now my Tessa and Teagan. In in doing so... you've become their friends too. Tessa keeps asking, "Where my lady friend go?

Swimming

Tessa and Teagan and I have been swimming the past few days. And Tessa's getting reacquainted with the whole process and in doing so she has been asking me to watch videos of herself as "Baby Tessa swimming." I will post a video of Teagan soon. But here is baby Tessa at 9months old.

Teagan and I went to New York and we visited with Mr. Truman and his mom and dad. You may remember Truman from an earlier posting this fall. Truman lost his identical twin brother, Fisher in November. My most recent visit was in celebration though, Carrie and Truman (a very healthy Truman!) and Teagan and I played in baby land...a land we all feel lucky to live in. We spoke of Fisher and the passing of time. How no one really understands what Carrie and Michael have experienced and yet how fortunate they feel surrounded by a bounty of love.

I was struck by their relaxed nature, how easily they trade off the caring for Truman, how effortless his sleeping or not sleeping, his nursing or not nursing passes over them. They both agreed parenting is easier than they expected. And after thinking over this for a day or so, I thought, if all that they have been through, surgery during pregnancy, bed rest, premature deliveries, C-section, NICU, extreme sickness, losing a child... if this has made parenting somehow easier, than-WOW! How tough is parenting? But really, to be in their presence... parenting did seem easier. The two of them are a remarkable team, their mutual trust for one another is obvious, their level of respect is an example. Thank you for sharing your lives with me.

Below are some photographs of this charming boy, his parents...and Teags!!!

My Cousin's Wedding in Photographs

Today is my birthday

We've had over two weeks of sickness in our house. All of us had the stomach flu and now a treacherous cough. Both girls have had very high fevers. We took Teagan to the Emergency room earlier in the week after seven days of vomiting. It has been challenging but that instinctual mother has taken over and, when there is crisis, I operate very efficiently. We are all tired. I keep reiterating "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can." Lately all I can change is how I feel about the situation. I suppose that is the case with most things though, all we can really do is change our perception. Easier said than done.

This brings me to my birthday. I woke to a continuing downpour. The rain pooling in the driveway, grass saturated and flooded over. There was a time when I loved the rain. Before children. And as I sat holding Teagan against my chest, her face flushed with fever, I tried to remember what else I used to love. It isn't so much that those loves have passed but instead that what I once loved is so much more difficult now, to enjoy. I loved to run in the rain, come home take a long, hot shower and spend hour after hour writing. The winters I spent in New England proved to be my favorite season. But now, stuck in the house with two sick children... the rain seemed to mock me. What I can no longer do...

My aunt called to wish me a Happy Birthday. I cried. She said, "what makes you happy, Lani? " Running. And writing. And so I handed over Teagan to Brian and headed out the door. I was gone for most of an hour, and my brain was occupied by poetry. I began my run reciting a few of my favorite lines and those thoughts led me to some of my own writing and before long, I was consumed by my run in the pouring rain, my toes sloshing around my shoes, my shirt and running shorts slapping against my skin. I was cold and warm and completely captured by how much I love the rain, especially running in the rain and especially thinking about poetry while running in the rain.

So while changing my perception seems, at times, impossible, today I rallied the courage to remember what I love. Not what Tessa loves, not what Brian loves, but just me, all alone. Isolated. Today, I let myself for that hour, do what I love. Even though it wasn't a long run (which I usually like to do on my birthday) and even though I didn't write a poem, all I had to do in that hour was carry myself. And...

This is enough. This is enough. Today. On my birthday.

How could I mother?

Child by Slyvia Plath

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose name you meditate--
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.


Here's another poem I have loved over time. Even before my own children, I read and memorized this poem. The explicit clarity of the first line, which in having children, has only grown more true for me. That yes, to look into my child's eye, and truly become absorbed in it, there lies such a consuming beauty. Yet, at times the clarity of my child's eye has been hard to look into. At times, this eye stands a measures of myself. This eye, a mirror, looking back at me, reflecting what I feel I've done right and also, even more glaring-- reflecting what I am not.

In the early days of Tessa's life, her eyes haunted me. Her eyes seemed to bury into me, rubbing raw my deepest fears. Here, in my arms, a body so frail, so easily crushable. A life given to me, to shape, and disfigure. My ridgity would suffocate her, my overbearing emotional life would drown her, my self loathing would become her own.

My failings will break this child.

How could I mother her?

Looking back, the third day of her life marked the beginning of my postpartum depression. I was struggling to nurse her, sitting next to the window, the fall sun lowering, it's slant light signaling the impending winter.

I was afraid. And would after some time, become less afraid. Her eyes would soften or rather my perception of her eyes would shift. Some months later, I would find myself embraced by her blue, white eyes, speckled by gold, softly repeating the lines of Slyvia Plath..."Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing."

Looking back: Tessa at Teagan's age

Teagan is crawling from room to room. She is quite determined until she realizes how far away from me or Tessa or her dad, she's gotten. She may whimper just a bit, beckoning us a little closer so she can go on exploring, feeling more secure to go on blooming in her independence.

She has also discovered the cabinets in the kitchen. Or rather she has discovered their ability to open and even more exciting, their contents. But true to her nature she knows they are there and knows she can open them but doesn't feel the need to visit them constantly. She will and does when she wants to but otherwise can take it or leave it. She'd much rather be giggling at her sister, engaging Tessa in a dialogue.

Here are a few shot of life in the past week.

these days are numbered

Tessa will begin school in the fall. I am preparing for this. The end of something, a time which, at times, I didn't believe would ever end. How desperate I wanted that 6 weeks mark to come, knowing I would be recovered from her birth, and the 3 month mark so nursing would be easier, and once she could hold a toy in her hand or sit up so she'd be less frustrated. Or crawl so I she could go and get that ball for herself. Or walk so I wouldn't have to hold her everywhere we went. Or sleep through the night or not need diapers or feed herself or climb into the swing without me or get herself dressed without me... and those desperate wants of mine--well, they have passed and we move onto the next one. Tessa pushes me through and completes these wants for me.

What was most difficult during these times was that, in their passing, I never knew when they would end. If I could have known that yes, in by age 7 weeks Tessa would nurse comfortably from both breasts or that when I found myself, along with Brian awake for hours and hours each night, that yes, soon, Tessa would sleep for long stretches of time and by that age of 2, I wouldn't have to take her for midnight strolls, in the front pack, throughout the neighborhood, just to get her to sleep. If I could have know the exact time I needed to hold on, 3 more weeks, 6 months, whatever the length of time until things shifted, it would have been so much easier. I can only compare these times to the struggles I have met in running marathons. As long as I know how long I must push, I will push. That is me at my core. I will get through those 20 miles as long as I know there are only 20 more miles to run. But this is also how running differs from mothering. Running is finishable. I know with running, how much longer I must dig deep and push. Mothering has very little beginning or foreseeable ending but there is an ending. This I know from my Tessa. And in having Tessa to mark the endings, I have been gifted my Teagan to mark my beginnings and this time, hold onto what's in my hands, not desperately scanning the road ahead for the next mile marker.